Coloring with Photoshop

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Coloring with Photoshop is really quite easy - all you need is some
good line drawings and the willingness to learn how to take advantage
of the power of the Photoshop brush dynamics.

They're the key, you know - the brush dynamics (F5) - especially when
you
have
a Wacom Bamboo or
Wacom Intuos pen tablet installed
on your computer.
Your tablet can actually be an older Wacom product like the
Bamboo Fun or an earlier Intuos.

The version of your tablet doesn't matter - what matters is that the
tablet drivers
tell Photoshop that a pressure sensitive device is installed which
opens up those really effective brush dynamics.

With the brush dynamics you can change the opacity and size as well as
adding
jitter to your brush strokes which does all kinds of really neat things
with your
artwork.

In addition to the brush dynamics, your choice of a brush will also
have an effect on your project.

It's
easy to go with a round, soft brush but there really isn't much fun in
that. Photoshop includes some great brushes and there are
thousands and thousands of places on-line where you can download
interesting and unique brushes.

If you are a creative type you can also make your own brushes right in
Photoshop.

This
tutorial will concentrate on the most useful brush dynamics to use when
adding colour to a piece of line art - like this one ...

This great line drawing that was downloaded from Color You Own is a
good
example of what the brush dynamics can do.

Before
I fully understood how to use the dynamics I would have painted this in
solid colors using a soft round brush - it would look OK but would lack
this more dynamic
appearance.

Brush
Dynamics

According to the Adobe Help files ...

"The Brushes palette
provides many options for adding dynamic (or
changing) elements to preset brush tips. For example, you can set
options that vary the size, colour, and opacity of brush marks over the
course of a stroke."

There's a Brushes Palette
tutorial on my site. The information you will find there will
be
repeated here plus there is information here that goes beyond the
basics.

The brush dynamics are controlled in the Brushes Palette
(F5) and it is included with all versions of Photoshop as far back as
version 5 This means you don't need to have the latest and
greatest version of Photoshop to colour with some really neat effects.

The two controls that create the biggest change with pressure when
colouring line art are Opacity
and Other Dynamics.

These
are the two dynamics that created the colourfulful butterfly wings and
the
apparent shadings in the lilly pad and the water ....

Opacity
is self explanatory - the harder the pen is pressed onto the tablet the
darker the stroke up to the opacity set in the options bar.

Color Dynamics
- with light pen pressure the Background colour
flows and as the pen is pressed harder onto the tablet the colour
starts to blend into the Foreground colour.

Within Other Dynamics there are a lot of different controls called Jitter.

Jitter

Everything that follows is based on a Wacom graphics tablet being
installed
(with the drivers, of course) on a computer.

Jitter
is the amount of randomness in a brush stroke based on pen pressure.
At 0% the strokes
are not at all random and at 100% they are completely random.

Foreground/Background
Jitter

At the top of the palette is Foreground/Background Jitter in Color
Dynamics..

Foreground/Background
Jitter at 0%

Foreground/Background
Jitter at 100%

The
difference in the strokes is easy to see. With no jitter (0%)
the
paint changes smoothly from the background colour to the foreground
colour as more pressure is applied - there is no randomness at all.

With
the Foreground/Background Jitter at 100% the maximum amount of
randomness is introduced and with full pressure on the pen the paint
flows non-uniformly. This creates a bit of texture in the
brush
stroke or a bit of chaos if you like.

Here
is an example of Foreground/Background Jitter. The wing on
the
left of the Butterfly has the setting at 100% and the wing on the right
has the setting set at 0%. The left wing has more
texture
than the right which is more appealing.

If this is the only thing you modify when you are colouring some line
art it is an improvement over a solid colour.

Hue
Jitter

Hue Jitter introduces randomness in the hues of the
foreground/background colours

Hue Jitter at
0%

Hue Jitter at
100%

The two examples above still have the Foreground/Background Jitter at
100%.

The
difference between 0% hue Jitter on the right wing and 100% Hue Jitter
on the left wing is easy to see. Hue Jitter introduces a lot
of
randomness, doesn't it?

Incidentally, the foreground and background colours are

Saturation
Jitter

Saturation
Jitter introduces randomness into the saturation of the paint stroke.
This dynamic is more subtle than Hue Jitter.

Saturation
Jitter at 1%

Saturation
Jitter at 100%

Here
is out little butterfly once again. The left wing was painted
with Foreground/Background Jitter at 100%, Hue Jitter at 100% and
Saturation Jitter at 1%.

The right wing was painted with Foreground/Background Jitter at 100%,
Hue Jitter at 100% and Saturation Jitter at 100%.

The
right wing is more saturated with colour than the left wing. Of course,
all of the settings can be modified between their minimum setting and
their maximum setting.

Brightness
Jitter

The last jitter is Brightness Jitter which introduces some randomness
into the brightness of each brush stroke.

Brightness
Jitter at 0%

Brightness
Jitter at 100%

This jitter certainly darkens thing up in a dramatic way, doesn't it?

Depending on the artwork being coloured the Brightness Jitter may need
to be much lower than 100% as it is here.

It
is also necessary to point out that all of the Jitters are at their
maximum at this point. In most cases they will be set at less
than 100% for each of them.

Purity

When
the Purity slider is set to -100% the resulting paint stroke is a
greyscale version of the foreground and background colours.

At
+100% the paint stroke is in full colour. The three strokes in
the
sample are -100% on the top, 0% in the middle and +100% on the bottom.

Those
are the most interesting and useful Jitter adjustments available when
you are using Photoshop with a Bamboo or Intuos tablet installed on
your computer. All of these samples were done with an Intuos4
Medium tablet.

An
Example

Here is another really nice piece of line art from Color Your Own.

So - let's colour this line art starting with the wolf but first some
suggestions ...

Don't be too concerned if you go outside of the lines
of the line art. When you are finished painting simply grab
the eraser, zoom in tight and erase anything outside of the lines.

It really is advisable to create a new layer (and
name it) for each element you are colouring. When you have completed an
area (like the wolf in this case) change the Blend Mode of the
layer to Multiply
to add some punch to the layer - it brings out the line art.

Make a note of the foreground and background colours
for each element just in case you want to go back and do some
additional painting.

Wolf

These are the settings for the
wolf:

Other Dynamics and Color Dynamics were both activated in the brushes
palette.

Other Dynamics and Color Dynamics were both activated in the brushes
palette. The tree trunk may appear kind of strange with all
of those colours but hey - how often do you see a Fairy Queen petting a
wolf while she holds her horse?

Other Dynamics (Opacity) Adjustments for both the leaves and the tree
trunk are the same.

Opacity Jitter - 100%
Flow Jitter - 100%

Fairy Queen's
Skin and Tiara
The tiara and arm bands are bright red with no brush dynamics and the
skin tone is

RGB 237, 207, 148.

The
Final Image

Here is the final image after doing the colouring. Each
section was on its own layer so the final image contained 7 layers.

This was a fun project and if you love colouring then you will really
enjoy digital colouring with Photoshop.

So - being a fan of the Wacom tablets and having fun with this project
I just had to do some additional work with the line art

Two earth tones were selected and Color Dynamics was selected to add
the look of the ground to the lower half of the image

Some sky tones were added with two different shades of blue as the
foreground and background colours and the Color Dynamics selected.

Here is the end result.

How about adding a gradient as the background? The
gradient is the very bottom layer so some changes had to be made to the
original image.

Any part of the art work that was
not coloured was removed. I used the Magic Wand to
select the
white portion and then hit the Delete key. Areas that were
not
picked up by the Magic Wand were removed with the Eraser (actually, you
could remove all of the white background with the eraser if that proves
to be easier).

Here is the coloured artwork with a gradient ...

The only thing that is missing in the project is a nice frame - that is
the topic for another tutorial.